


Set the bone straight

by galateaGalvanized



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fix-It, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Okay a 'break it' then 'fix-it', Purge Trooper CC-2224 | Cody, crying in the desert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 22:08:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29891271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galateaGalvanized/pseuds/galateaGalvanized
Summary: A pair of Vader’s Inquisitors corner him outside of the mess hall after he brings in another dead Jedi. Vader had been particularly pleased with this one, and the Inquisitors are glittering with envy.“So, d’you think you’ll be getting a red saber soon, CC-2224?” Fourth Sister all but snarls, shoving him into the wall while Fifth Brother looms behind her. “What do you think you’ll be? Tenth brother? Eleventh?”“212th brother,” he says, and he doesn’t know why.Or,Purge Trooper Cody and the long road home.
Relationships: CC-2224 | Cody/Obi-Wan Kenobi
Comments: 73
Kudos: 365





	Set the bone straight

‘24 has barely set foot on the _Executor_ when his comm buzzes red with warning. He’s too strung-out to be nervous when he reads the message, and he’s too exhausted to be embarrassed when he tracks Kashyyyk’s yellow-brown mud into Lord Vader’s war room. There’s the chance that he’ll be receiving a commendation for killing a Jedi; Wolffe had gotten one for Koon, and Bly still wears the medal he received for slotting Secura. 

The aura of malice and frustration surging off of Vader suggests something different entirely.

“Lord Vader,” ‘24 says, almost choking on how thick the tension is. “How can I serve?”

Vader’s deep breaths seem like they’re burning up all the oxygen. He turns, slowly, his cape settling behind him with a leaden finality.

“How can you serve, indeed, Commander,” Vader says, and ‘24 thinks that he should be afraid, but terror is a distant memory. “How can you serve, when you've already failed once? Kenobi lives.”

That’s—that’s—

‘24 straightens his shoulders, ignoring the drumbeat of pain in his right temple. “I will accept any punishment for my failure, sir.”

The red transparisteel of Vader’s visor glints in the dull blue light of the war room as he moves closer. ‘24 can’t help but glance at the bend of his knees, even though the prosthetics’ movements are smoother ‘24’s own aging, clicking joints. The way Vader moves reminds him of something, something buried even deeper than his emotions.

“You failed to kill Kenobi, Commander… but so did I. I will not exact on you the same price I paid for my failure,” Vader says, and his respirator echoes louder than it rightly should in the small space. “At least, not yet.”

Beneath the vocoder is something as itchily familiar as what’s beneath the armor, but ‘24 can’t focus on that right now.

“You owe us a Jedi, Marshal Commander,” Vader says, and the portable holoprojector he opens shows the face of a Kel Dor woman, her brow ridges furrowed in righteous anger over the edges of her goggles. There’s a chain code behind the image of her face, but ‘24’s attention is caught by the downturn of her mouth, the white-knuckled and four-fingered grip around her saber. 

“What do you know about her?” Vader asks, and for the first time there’s curiosity alongside the fury.

‘24 frowns, staring at the grip, and there’s something just on the edge of his memory, fighting its way to the surface from beneath metric tons of impenetrable durasteel. A stabbing pain lances through his right temple, and he can’t help but wince away from the projection.

“Nothing, sir,” he says at last, grateful that his visor hides the way he’s screwed his eyes shut, even though Vader almost certainly still knows. Vader grumbles, discontent, and ‘24 thinks that this second failure might mean he can at last rest. 

He opens his eyes in time to see Vader’s gloved hand reach out, and he keeps his breathing steady as his neck seal unlatches and his helmet floats gently away.

“Perhaps a slight modification is necessary,” Vader says.

‘24 feels a light pinch that is nowhere near the pain he was expecting. The weight on his memories hasn’t lifted, but it no longer feels like durasteel; it feels like ash and bone and dirt, thick but siftable.

When ‘24 looks at the projection again, a name floats up through the debris. "Ra Zun.”

She’d been fearless on the field, he knows, suddenly. She’d never had white-knuckles then, and she’d missed her home planet more than she missed her deceased master. He wonders how he knows that last, but there’s another memory tucked in beside her name. 

_“I’m so sorry for your loss, Ra,” a man is saying, careful compassion in his voice. His back is to ‘24, and ‘24 can see the line of his shoulders slumped in sorrow._

_“It’s okay,” the girl—Ra Zun—in front of him says. “I mean, it’s not okay, it’s not anything. It’s. It’s…by the Force, Obi-Wan, I just want to go home. Please, I want to go_ home _.”_

_“I know, I know,” the man says, gathering her into his arms. “Shh, Ra. Tell me about home, then. The markings on your mask don’t look like Master Plo’s, hm? They’re clan markings? Tell me about those.”_

_She does so, haltingly and in between sobs, until she has to let the tears out from beneath her goggles. The man signs to ‘24 behind his back, and ‘24 steps quietly from the room. He’d always learned so much about people from watching Gener—_

‘24 frowns, dragging himself back up to the present. “I’ll find her, sir.”

Vader breathes out, satisfied. “See that you do, Commander.”

The Empire provides ‘24 with a squad of stormtroopers that are about as much use as a screen door on an X-wing. It’s a miracle that ‘24 manages to find Zun at all with those imbeciles clattering and clanking behind him, practically announcing the Empire’s arrival at the Caldoran clan gates. They've clearly never trained in vac suits before, and '24 loses one to an improperly sealed suit within an hour of op start. Vader might not be trying to kill '24, but he's hardly trying to keep him alive.

The terrain is dense rock beneath him. He’s never been to Dorin, but he knows the specs: it has a density twice that of standard gravity and a thick, multi-layered atmosphere that keeps lighter gases closer to the surface than on standard Class-M planets. The combination makes walking feel like moving through liquid glass. The buildings around him are huge round domes made of a dull gray metal, some strange continuous sheet that looks as if it were sculpted instead of cast. ‘24 can’t see any doors or windows, and he doesn’t see any Kel Dor, but he doesn’t need to. He’s a professional, after all, and he’s had stealth teams on planet for more than a tenday gathering intel on their target. 

His squad is just here to put the final nail in her coffin.

They find her in one of those round buildings at the edge of the city, and it takes more than an inch of explosives to blow two entrances into existence. Jedi think knowing where their enemies are means knowing where the attack will come from, especially ones that are scared and alone and listening more to the Force than the click of detonators. It's a strategic flaw, just like their tendency to hesitate while looking for a nonviolent solution. It used to frustrate him so much, watching—

Anyways, maybe the survivors will lose that trait in time, but Zun hasn’t just yet.

She goes down quickly once surrounded, clutching her leg with an arm that's covered in oil slick blood. ‘24 had never seen her eyes before now. They’re the black of a sleeping monitor: dark but still lit, gray and blue and black and angry.

“I know you,” she says, and she doesn't sound even slightly surprised; her anger has eclipsed everything else. It's amazing she's managed to stay a Jedi with a rage like that. “By the Force, you’re still wearing the same goddamn armor. Didn’t want to upgrade like the rest of your new friends?”

‘24 signals his team to spread out behind the scant cover in the house. There’s a couch, a wall, what might be a refrigerator. It’s not much, but ‘24’s been caught off guard by a Jedi that seemed down and out before. Zun watches with contempt as he moves forward, but she starts to shake when he sees him ready his blaster. He wonders if she's going to try to negotiate.

“I guess if you’d kill Obi-Wan, you’d kill any of us," she spits at him instead. "If he couldn’t save you, none of us can.”

CC-2224 levels his blaster at her head. 

"I'm not the one who needs saving," he says, and he shoots her before she can say that name again.

-—-

There's new armor waiting for him when gets back to Vader's flagship with victory in hand. It's an impersonal, shiny black, and it's heavier than it looks. Zun's words linger in the back of his mind as he strips off his Phase 2 armor. The words sting in a way they shouldn't, and it's harder to set the last piece down than it should be. It’d been rebuilt and modified to fit his every need; he'd grown into like a turtle grows into its shell, and it’s going to the incinerator. His thumb lingers on the orange-gold paint of his right bracer, where there’s a sun decal painted with a more careful hand than the one that painted all the rest. 

The back of his neck prickles, and he turns to see one of the Inquisitors watching him with curiosity and distaste in her eyes.

"Come on, CC-2224," she says. "The maintenance droids will get that trash. It's time for the beauty segment of this makeover."

By the end of the day, there's a mark on his face, red and shiny with bacta, and no marks on his armor. He has to adjust his stride for the long black kama he'd never worn, and he keeps having to duck sideways to keep the leather pauldron from getting caught on every narrow door.

He almost has the hang of it by the time Vader recalls him to the war room with three more Jedi pucks for his roster.

“Commander. Good work with Ra Zun,” Vader says, and the waft of approval from him feels familiar in the same way Zun’s anger had. ‘24 bows his head, accepting the praise and wondering absently if he can really still be called a commander. The new armor didn't come with a new rank, but Vader never uses '24's designation.

It hardly matters, now.

The three images that Vader’s pucks produce run the gamut of species and ages: a youthful Kithar, an aged Bothan, and a Rodian of completely indeterminate age or gender. ‘24 stares at them, sifting through the burial dirt atop his memory for any glint of familiarity, when he feels that pinch again above his right temple. Their names come to him after the brief pressure subsides, rising to the surface of his mind.

He glances at Vader, who shrugs with his mechanical arm and clicks its metal fingers together in a casual, careless gesture. The motion sets off another familiar itch in ‘24s memory that he doesn’t want to touch just yet.

“Find them, Commander,” Vader says, respirator humming. “And find _him_.”

-—-

‘24 finds the bodies, this time. He brings them all back aboard the _Executor_ in various pieces and stages of decay, and he makes sure that their lightsabers are tucked next to whatever remains of their hands. He’s not sure why he feels the need to return the lightsabers. When one of the Inquisitors asks, he says it’s because he doesn’t want to give any other aspiring Jedi an advantage. It could be true.

Vader seems to appreciate it, at least. He picks up the lightsaber of ‘24’s latest bounty, and ‘24 catches it on instinct when Vader tosses it.

“You’re giving my Inquisitors a run for their credits,” he says. “I think you deserve to have one of your own.”

‘24 moves to tuck it into his belt, but there’s no clip that fits. He doesn’t know why he thought there would be. 

The lightsaber ends up a useless decoration for his armor locker. His fingers feel strange for an hour after holding it, as if his hand knows the heft of a lightsaber, as if his body knows something that his mind doesn’t. The itch feels the same as the one he gets when he’s digging for information on a Jedi, and he isn’t expected on the bridge until tomorrow, so he reaches deep into his memory and chases the itch.

_He’s handing a lightsaber over to a man in tan robes and scratched white armor, a man whose face he can’t quite see, and there's a small crowd of his brothers laughing at his back._

_“I thought this lightsaber was your life, sir,” '24 says, grinning and grateful that he can tease his general like this. “If that's true, you must have as many lives as a tooka.”_

_“Oh, Force, the Quartermaster would have me dropped back down to padawan if I lost that many. Thank you, Cody. Whatever would I do without you?”_

‘24 breathes in, sharp, his fingers curled into fists so tight that his nails have bitten into his palms. He wants to see the man’s face.

He wants to know who Cody is.

-—-

The assignments, once plentiful, start to slow to a trickle. The easy targets are gone. His missions get longer, and he's called in less and less.

He goes on a few missions with Vader’s Inquisitors and other purge troopers for a couple of the more dangerous Jedi, but he otherwise works separate from the Inquisitors. They might be able to match the Jedi for power, but '24’s developed a reputation for being able to find the Jedi that Imperial intel can’t. He misses a few, of course; no one can find Quinlan Goddamn Vos, and Kad or Venku or whatever his name is was hidden so deep in the bowels of Mandalore that ‘24 wouldn’t be surprised if he’s still chipping his way out of the glass.

'24's initial victories allow him to marshal a small squad of the men he’d fought with before the Purge, and he watches them swap white armor for black with a hollow ache in his chest. He loses them slowly, one by one by one, and the natborns that replace his men are worse than useless. Most of them die within minutes of enemy contact, and the few that survive couldn’t hit the broad side of a bantha. It gets bad enough that he starts running solo missions. There’s push-back at first, but he eventually brings back enough Jedi to stop getting questions and start getting blanket approvals.

The most dangerous aspects of his missions are his co-workers, honestly. His knack for finding hidden Jedi earns him no favors among the Inquisitors, who have enough competition in their own ranks without any from some Force-null _clone_. Fourth Sister and Fifth brother bridle the most at Vader’s praise of ‘24, and he keeps his blaster close when the two of them are on the _Executor_ together.

They corner him outside of the mess hall after he brings in another bounty. Vader had been particularly pleased with this one, and the Inquisitors are glittering with envy.

“So, d’you think you’ll be getting a red saber soon, CC-2224?” Fourth Sister all but snarls, shoving him into the wall while Fifth Brother looms behind her. “What do you think you’ll be? Tenth brother? Eleventh?”

“212th brother,” he says, and he doesn’t know why.

-—-

He sits in his quarters that night, and he thinks about digging through his memories for himself again. He doesn’t have much to go on, just a few names from the depths of his subconscious: Cody, 212th. He doesn’t even know if there’s much else to find.

His door locks, theoretically. It won’t keep out anyone but the most pathetic of stormtrooper grunts let alone any of the people who’d come to look for him, but it locks. A half second might make the difference between surviving or being caught in what he’s about to do.

His instincts tell him to fold his legs beneath him on the floor, and it feels right even though the cold durasteel bites into the thin fabric of his blacks. His breath starts to come more evenly, his heart rate slows, and his eyes close like a final curtain falls.

_He opens his eyes to a familiar room, and the person on the floor next to him hums a question. He still can’t see their face, just cream robes and freckled skin, a fuzzy mess of auburn hair, and a sense of peace and home that washes over him in a tidal wave._

_“Thanks for taking the time to teach me this, General,” '24 is saying._

_“It’s no trouble at all; I’m happy to do it, in fact. I've always loved teaching,” the man replies, and there's a smile in his voice that '24 can't see on his face._

_“Just not, at the moment, teaching Skywalker some self-restraint?”_

_The man laughs. “Exactly. Honestly, you’re the one doing me the favor, letting me hide in your quarters like this.”_

_There’s a feeling in '24's chest that is too big for words, swelling like a balloon beneath his sternum into something also too big for his chest. He opens his mouth to say something, anything, when the comm goes off on the other man’s wrist. The man sighs and shakes his head, his knees creaking as he unfolds them to stand._

_“I guess there’s no hiding from him for long, sir,” ‘24 says instead._

_“Not here,” the man agrees. “But, between you and me, if I ever really needed to hide from Anakin? I’d just need to find a place with enough sand._ ”

-—-

‘24’s waiting for another lead when a call to muster comes in. Vader has overridden any existing orders to marshal a team of three Inquisitors and five squads of Purge Troopers for a mission on Zygerria. When the _Executor_ touches down and the Zygerrians run screaming, ‘24 can’t help but wonder at the logic behind the decision. ‘Overkill’ seems like underkill to describe the situation. The whole Zygerrian system has an agreement with the Empire that regulates their slaving, and they clearly weren’t prepared for or expecting the Empire to come calling.

Especially not with lightsabers in hand.

‘24 discovers, eventually, what had brought Vader’s wrath: one of the Jedi the Inquisitors have been looking for for months, collared in Force-suppressants and chained in iron. The Zygerrians had been hoping to sell a Jedi for top credits, ‘24 realizes. They’re a rare species, these days, and getting rarer. The Empire will pay a lot for a Jedi, but the Zygerrians apparently thought they could find a buyer who’d pay more.

The Jedi in question is sitting cross-legged on the floor, a single point of patience and calm amidst the screaming chaos of Zygerrians being killed en masse by Vader’s whirling red sabers. He’s blind, ‘24 realizes, sighting down his blaster into milky white irises, and he’s as rail-thin as a coat rack that grew legs and walked off. He honestly looks like a stiff wind might knock him over, but, sitting blind and serene on a red sandstone floor, he looks somehow stronger than ‘24 has ever been.

‘24 lowers his blaster and opens his mouth, at a complete loss for what to do or say.

He doesn’t get the chance to decide. Vader’s red saber hums into existence and slices through the Jedi’s neck, perfectly parallel to the top edge of his slave collar. ‘24 chokes, startled back into the reality of battle, though the furor is dying down. Vader is staring at him; ‘24 can tell, even through the visor.

“Why did you hesitate?” There’s a faint curiosity in the rasp of breath, and ‘24 wonders if it’s just hiding Vader’s judgment.

Because he was unarmed, ‘24 thinks. Because he wasn’t a threat to anyone. Because I wanted to know how he could sit there, staring death in the face, and choose death over revenge.

“I thought he might have intel on other Jedi,” he says instead. “It might’ve been worthwhile to take him prisoner.”

“There was no need to prolong his suffering,” Vader says, an expert in prolonged suffering. The Jedi’s collar has rolled off onto the floor, and Vader slices it into two pieces as an afterthought. “He knew nothing we cannot find elsewhere. His life, and their lives, are worth nothing to the Empire.”

Fourth Sister comes up behind ‘24, smiling and twirling her lightsabers in a way he knows she thinks looks intimidating. It’s becoming more and more obvious how much she hates that Vader keeps ‘24 as close as any of her “siblings”. The more practice ‘24 gets in analyzing Jedi, the better he gets at understanding her. His presence doesn’t fit into her mental pecking order, and it bothers her that a clone—less inherently valuable than a person, and less efficient and purposeful than a machine—stands shoulder to shoulder with her.

“Careful there, ‘24,” she drawls. “Wouldn’t want anyone to think you’re going soft. What would you be worth to the Empire then?”

‘24 doesn’t give her the satisfaction of an answer, but he thinks: Nothing. Nothing at all.

-—-

Later, back in his quarters on the _Executor_ , ‘24 folds his legs underneath him on the floor. It’s become a pose he’s fallen into more and more lately, puzzling through memories that don’t feel like his to find enemies that don’t feel like his, either. The monolith of material burying those memories has been lightened by Vader’s interference, and he’s gone digging through it enough times to shift a few things loose. Something about the slave collar and Vader’s reaction had triggered something, an itch as familiar to ‘24 now as his black armor. He hasn’t gone searching for information related to Vader just yet, but.

He hasn’t found the Jedi he lost, either. 

‘24 holds the image of the broken slave collar in his mind, metal molten red at its broken edges, and he closes his eyes.

_The holoprojector flies out of his hands and shatters in a burst of electronics and poorly contained fury, bits crushed to dust in a metallic hand._

_“Zygerrian scum! I’ll deal with them,” the hand’s owner snarls while a familiar, all-encompassing rage pours off him in waves. He moves forward until another man blocks his path, arms up in placation._

_“Anakin, please, I’ll handle this,” the other man says, and Cody catches a glimpse of blue eyes before the face blurs into an abstract haze once again. “He asked for me. I need you to locate the citizens.”_

_The angry man huffs and walks off, and a young Togrutan looks up in alarm and confusion._

_The other man sighs, looking between ‘24 and the Togruta with his mouth sharply down turned. ‘24 understands his reluctance; this is a secret that isn’t the man’s to share, but it’s affecting the war effort. The people must come first._

_“Anakin and his mother were sold into slavery by the Hutts,” the man explains in a soft voice. “It’s a part of his history that he’s always struggled to face.”_

_“Oh,” the Togruta says, swinging from alarm to concern with the ease of the very young. “Oh… is that why he hates Tatooine? Even though he was born there?”_

_“That and the sand,” the man says, and their answering smiles all fall a little flat._

‘24 comes back to himself more slowly, this time, rising up from the depths of his memory like a sea diver rising slow enough to decompress along the way. The rage, the mechanical arm, the way he brought the full might of the Empire to bear on a single, weakened slaver city. The obsession with the one Jedi that ‘24 failed to kill. 

_If I ever had to hide from Anakin_ , ‘24 hears again, and he knows where he has to go.

-—-

He doesn’t take any squads with him. On his requisition forms, he doesn’t even mention the planet name, just lists the sprawling, Outer Rim system it belongs to. He’s got a hunch, he tells them, and enough of his hunches have led to dead Jedi that the higher-ups don’t question it. He just boards a ship and goes.

This Jedi is his responsibility, and his alone.

-—-

It only takes him three days of recce across Tatooine’s scant few urban hubs to find his Jedi. Over the years, he’s gotten very good at keying into chatter about strange, aloof newcomers or children who’ve returned home a shell of who they once were. Tatooine’s a rough, unchanging backwater, barren of almost anything of interest beyond small-town gossip, so anything out of the ordinary is immediately obvious.

‘24 hears about the lone stranger, hollow-eyed and quiet and living out near the Jundland Wastes, very quickly. It’s strange how easy it is to find the man considering who exactly wants him dead, but the Empire is not as all-seeing as it likes to think. Cal Kestis hadn’t even changed his name, and it still took two years to find him.

Didn’t even change his name… these Jedi trust the Force too much, though the Force serves Vader just as well as it serves any of them.

Better, even.

The long-range scope and rifle attachment clicks onto his DC-15LE with a satisfying snap, and ‘24 settles his body more firmly into the ridge. It’s strange that the man he’s watching hasn’t noticed him through the Force. The older Jedi tend to know when someone’s trying to kill them, so ‘24 had thought he’d need traps, or a few of Delta’s slug throwers. Maybe this Jedi’s just overconfident in the idea that the universe thinks he’s dead, content to sit in the shade of his back garden with his feet folded beneath him, communing with whatever meager scraps of life this barren planet can offer.

‘24 sights through the scope, shortening his shot to account for aiming downhill and watching the sand spin across the dunes until the wind dies down. He counts his heartbeats, waiting for the right gap, and he slows his breathing to a steady crawl. He pulls the trigger like he’s squeezing a grape, just as he has a million times before. It’s an absurdly easy shot, with low wind, high visibility, and an unmoving target. He was making harder shots when he was four.

He misses.

Sand kicks up in a white-yellow spray just behind the Jedi, and then a blue lightsaber sings into existence, spinning through the air. ‘24 curses and keeps shooting—keeps _missing_ —and he’s counting down the seconds until he needs to unsnap the rifle attachment and prepare for short-range combat. He almost doesn’t get it off before there’s a brown and cream blur on top of him, and then he has to use the rifle stock as a blunt force weapon more than anything else. 

The katarn armor saves his life once, twice, and he just barely manages to use the Jedi’s confusion at the armor’s lightsaber resistance to get the upper hand. He locks the Jedi’s wrist in the crease of ‘24’s elbow and squeezes, forcing the Jedi to drop the lightsaber into the sand. 

But the Jedi’s far from harmless without it. 

‘24’s fought a lot of Jedi by this point, and he’s even had to wrestle a few of them to the ground, but it was never like this. A Force blast knocks him off his feet, and his back hits the burning sand with a hollow thud. Something at the base of his helmet cracks when he lands, and the HUD screams with static. Winded from impact and panting with effort, ‘24 wrestles his bucket off one-handed, tightening his grip on his blaster and staggering to his feet just in time to see that the Jedi has stopped, blinking at him in shock.

“Cody?” the Jedi asks, voice as small as one of the grains of sand around them.

‘24 drops into a low tackle, slamming into the Jedi’s midriff and bringing them both to the ground. ‘24 gets on top of him, blaster shaking in his trembling hands, but at this range he doesn’t need a steady hand. He doesn’t even need to aim; he just needs to point the blaster at the Jedi’s face and pull the trigger. Even from a foot away, the shot goes wide. So does the next, and the next, until the sand around the Jedi’s head has become a shimmering halo of glass.

The Jedi is no longer struggling at all; he’s just staring upwards in shock, eyes a brilliant wide madder blue.

With a growl of frustration that feels like it’s ripping him in two, '24 unsheathes his vibroblade and punches it downwards, and it crunches into the melted sand an inch to the side of the Jedi's face.

“Why can’t I kill you?” ‘24 gasps. He feels moisture on his cheeks, dripping down his chin. “What have you done to me?”

“Oh, it _is_ you,” the Jedi murmurs with wonder in his voice. He sits up a few inches so that he can reach for ‘24’s face, and he wipes away the tears with rough, calloused hands, lingering at the edge of ‘24’s scar.

‘24’s blaster falls from his shaking fingers. He knows that hand. He knows that face, though it’s been ravaged by biting winds and endless sun, pocked and scarred and violently red in the cheeks, as if his skin has taken the color from his hair. His face slots into all the memories from before like the last puzzle piece clicking into place. 

“I know you,” ‘24 says, and for a single wild second he thinks he might know more about this Jedi than he knows about himself. “How do I—why do I know you?”

The Jedi— _Kenobi_ , it's _Kenobi_ ; '24 had buried his memories of him instead of his body _—_ lies back down, laughing softly in disbelief. 

“Well, if you’re not going to kill me and I’m not going to kill you," Kenobi says, and he might be trying to smile, "why don’t we talk inside?”

-—-

There’s sand in ‘24’s armor and his boots and his hair, and the combination is still less uncomfortable than meekly following his target into the white stucco house. He tries to kill Kenobi three times before they even cross the threshold, but his arm won’t move after he unsheathes his vibroblade, and his fingers keep missing the ejector trigger for his fibercord whip. It’s _embarrassing_. He’s one of the best soldiers in the Imperial Army; he was trained by the Cuy’val Dar and Jango Fett himself; he was designed and born and bred just to kill this one man, and yet.

And yet he walks across the threadbare rug to the set of ragged, lumpy cushions that Kenobi gestures to, and he tries not to stare at the menagerie of second- and third-hand furniture that populate the house. He breathes slowly, steadily. There’s an ache in his head that can’t decide whether it wants him to start lighting fuses or lie down and go to sleep.

It’s fine, he tells it. Some Jedi mind trick might be stopping him now, but someone will notice when he misses check-in, and, as painful as it is, they’ll send others to clean up his mess.

A kettle whistle breaks the silence. Kenobi sets out two mugs with tea ball chains hanging over the sides. When Kenobi presses one into ‘24’s hands, it’s such an absurd nicety that ‘24 can’t even refuse. There’s a chip in the rim, he notices, so he keeps both hands wrapped snugly around the cup. He’s still shaking, and he doesn’t want to drop it and add another chip, not like—

_Alarms are blaring, loud and sudden with bright red flashes. He’s on his feet in an instant, lunging for his Deece, and Obi-Wan is already sprinting to the door. He turns quickly to follow his general, knocking against their planning table, and one of the mugs tips off the side and falls to the floor. The radio chatter coming through his helmet obscures the crash of the porcelain, so it's only when he returns to his room after the battle that he realizes what happened. He picks up the pieces, trying to see how they might fit back together, wishing clones were paid even a single credit so he could find a replacement for this beautiful broken thing._

With a gasp, he comes back to himself, curling over the cup like a wounded animal and letting the steam obscure his vision. He hadn’t even been trying to remember; the memories are just closer to the surface here. Seeing Kenobi again feels like getting a crack in the window of a Tie fighter and watching the cabin pressure start to drop, knowing that there are seconds before the transparisteel shatters and he loses all his air to vacuum.

He looks up to find Kenobi watching him with those piercing blue eyes.

“What do you remember, Cody?” 

His voice is so gentle, not pressing, just a soft knock on an open door.

"That's not my name," ‘24 croaks. It seems like a good place to start. “I’m not him. I’m CC-2224.”

Kenobi’s eyebrows furrow, and his mouth folds down into a stubborn line that ‘24 is surprised to find familiar. “I won’t treat you as anything less than the person you are.”

“But I’m not the person I _was_ , sir,” ‘24 says, and the honorific just falls out. He snaps his teeth shut as if he could recapture the word.

It makes Kenobi laugh, short and sour, and shake his head. “Why are you here, then? Did the Empire send you?” 

“Yes,” ‘24 answers. “Well, not to Tatooine. The Empire told me to find you.”

“And kill me.”

‘24 scowls. “I’m working on it.”

Kenobi laughs again, despite the subject matter.

“Well, while you’re working on it, why don’t we chat? I can sense your confusion. Is there something you want to know?”

And ‘24 shouldn’t say anything. He should smash this mug over the Jedi’s head, or drive his vibroblade into the Jedi’s throat, or even just demand to know what mindtrick the Jedi is pulling to keep himself alive.

“Who was he?” ‘24 asks instead. “Cody. Who was Cody?’

The smile that Kenobi is wearing flowers into something real.

“Cody was my commander,” he says, still more gentle than ‘24 deserves, warm with an emotion that ‘24 can’t name. “He was the man at my side and at my back for three long years. Cody saved my life more times than I can count. He was my saving grace, a light in the dark, and the sturdy foundation of my battalion and my strategy and my sanity during the war.”

‘24 swallows. A rift is opening in his chest, spreading like oceanic plates. “He served you.”

“He served _with_ me,” Kenobi corrects. “He shared my duty to his brothers and to democracy. He shared my paperwork and my tea. Long nights with little sleep and little reward for long conflicts. We shared our laughter, often, and our pain. He shared everything with me. He’s one of the best men I’ve ever known.”

The mass of debris a top his memories shudders as if beset by an earthquake, and memories float to the top through all the holes he’s dug throughout the years.

— _Thank you for… for everything, Cody, I—_

_—You’re not expendable, Cody. Not to the war effort, and not to me—_

_—Goodness gracious, Cody, I really will have to find a way to promote you to general at this rate—_

_—Cody, be present. Let your thoughts come, but then let them go. Like clouds in the sky—_

‘24 manages to hold onto that last one long enough to let the memories rush past him like water over a stone, and he digs cold fingers into the present. Kenobi watches him with the same serene eyes of the Jedi on Zygerria: the eyes of a man who has already died once and is simply waiting for his body to follow, wary of hope. His eyes… his eyes should never look like that.

“What is it that you want, Cody?” Kenobi asks, and ‘24 doesn’t correct him on the name. “And don’t say ‘to kill me’. You’ve always been able to achieve anything you set your mind to, and yet I’m clearly still breathing.”

He’s right, as much as ‘24 hates to admit it. The twin suns of Tatooine are starting to edge towards the horizon, and the white stucco walls do very little to keep out the intensifying afternoon heat. ‘24’s whole purpose in coming here, in surviving Vader’s first and primal rage, was to kill this one man. And he can’t seem to do that.

“I don’t know,” ‘24 says, over-honest with his enemy.

“Okay,” Kenobi says, taking a sip of tea, and he’s stalling so he can steel himself, “Okay. I won’t keep you prisoner here. You can stay or go, looking for what you want. But Cody, if you decide to go, I—I can’t let you remember this. It’s not just myself I’m protecting.”

Sweat springs to ‘24’s forehead, and his gut clenches in automatic refusal. He’s already lost so much; he clings to the scraps of what he does have like a pauper. He also wishes, desperately, that Kenobi would stop looking at him so knowingly. ‘24 is an empty shell: a hollow man. There is nothing for Kenobi to know.

“You don’t have to decide now,” Kenobi says, and his knuckles are white around his cup. “We’ll need to go to your ship either way. The Empire will be checking in on you soon, I think.”

He’s right. His ultimatum gives ‘24 less than half a rotation to decide.

“I’ll decide when we get there,” ‘24 rasps. 

Kenobi nods and glances out the window. “At sundown, perhaps. I think you’ve had enough heat for the day.”

They talk, in halting words and reminiscent tones, and ‘24 has to pull himself out of the ocean depths of new-old memories twice before the suns at last reach the hazy gold of the horizon. ‘24 leads Kenobi across sand painted in shimmering reds and oranges back to his ship, hidden three kliks to the east in a basin of dunes. They walk across the ridges where the sand is more compact, and twin sets of footprints wind behind them.

The GPS drop point blinks an ever-closer red beacon on ‘24’s wrist nav, and he wishes he’d thought to fix his helmet before setting out bareheaded. As he walks up the last ridge, he looks back over his shoulder at Kenobi. He could easily be luring Kenobi into a trap, but the man has just followed without question this whole way. The hood he’s wearing is pulled over his auburn hair, the autumnal colors of it fading into wintry grays, and ‘24 is abruptly at a loss for words. He hasn’t made his decision, yet. 

He wants an order; he is a man unaccustomed to choice.

What _does_ he want, though? He wants to find out what he wants. He wants to find out what he wanted, once, and use it as a roadmap to find where he is now. He wants more time to decide. He wants to walk these twisting sand with Kenobi for long enough to watch the suns rise and set and rise and set again. He wants to know if enough time in this unforgiving desert could bleach his black armor back to the white he barely remembers any more.

“We’re almost there,” he says, and Kenobi nods.

“Have you decided?”

‘24 swallows. He crests the ridge, and he looks down into the basin where his ship is parked.

Or rather, where maybe a quarter of his ship is parked.

“Oh seven _kriffing_ hells,” he says, and Kenobi sprints up in alarm.

“What is it, Cody, what’s wrong? I… oh.”

Pieces of ‘24’s ship curve upward from the sand like the rib cage of a long-dead mammoth, reduced to durasteel bones and a few pieces of sparking, stripped wire. There are little footprints in the sand next to little flattened curves like the sweep of too-long robes. Everything of even marginal worth has been carved from the ship, and its carcass lies bleeding oil and fuel into the cooling night air.

“ _Jawas_ ,” ‘24 growls, stunned into anger, and he’s about to launch into a series of curses when a peal of laughter cuts through his fury. He looks over to see Kenobi almost bent in half, wheezing with laughter, taken by it. 

“Sorry, sorry,” Kenobi says, waving a hand without looking up. He tries to stop, but the laughter bubbles out of his throat anyways. “It’s not that funny, it’s not. I just, it’s the first—Force, it’s the first time I’ve had a prayer answered in a long, long time.”

‘24 spins to face him. “You _wanted_ this to happen? _Why?”_

“I wanted you to stay,” Kenobi admits, straightening at last. The corners of his eyes are wet. “I… I just. Oh, Cody. I wanted you to stay.”

But more than that, he’d wanted to give ‘24 the choice. ‘24 thinks about what use he is to the Empire, now that he’s gone soft. He thinks about purpose, about being hollow, about finding new and old things to fill a gap. He thinks about Ra Zun, desperate to go home only to find that home isn’t always a place you can return to. He thinks _he shared everything with me_ , and he swallows.

“Until I can find another ship,” he says, and Kenobi’s smile is as bright as a double-sun sunrise.

Back in the adobe and curled on Kenobi’s couch in his blacks, ‘24 contemplates trying to kill his Jedi again. The trek through the sands and the suns has leached his energy, though, and he rolls onto his back with a sigh. His feet hang over the side, but he otherwise thinks he fits in with the hand-me-down furniture just fine: he’s been passed through many hands as well.

“I’m not him,” ‘24 says into the silence. It seems important, suddenly, that Kenobi doesn’t think he’s regained one of the many things he’s lost. ‘24 doesn’t know what he wants, but he doesn’t think he could bear Kenobi’s disappointment when he realizes that the Cody he knew is still long dead.

“You are,” Kenobi sighs, clearly teetering on the edge of sleep. It makes ‘24 want to chastise him for the vulnerability while the Imperial equivalent of a krayt dragon lies across his couch. “You are, I can tell.”

‘24 huffs in disapproval, but he turns onto his side. Memories spill into his waking mind, new and old. The carefully painted golden sun on his vambrace. Meditating on his general’s floors. Listening to Kenobi breathe as he drops off to sleep just as ‘24 is doing right now, but hunkered in caves and tents and fields, caring so much about every sequential breath. Sitting in the medbay, counting those breaths long into the night. Holding the pieces of that shattered cup and wanting to piece back together a beautiful, broken thing.

-—-

Kenobi wakes him up in the middle of the night, calling for Cody from the depths of a nightmare.

His voice is choked with pain, soft in the quiet of a desert night, and ‘24 doesn’t know what to do. Kenobi doesn’t wake when ‘24 sits on the side of the mattress and reaches out a shaking hand to tuck his hair up off his face. It’s dark with sweat, just like his eyelashes, and ‘24 is consumed with how vulnerable his target is. Kenobi’s throat is bare and his body unarmored, too trusting by half for the most wanted man in the galaxy. 

It would be so easy to kill him, if ‘24 could only figure out how.

In the end, he doesn’t wake Kenobi. He pulls his armor back on and sits cross-legged on the floor with his back against Kenobi’s bed, content to hold the watch until the morning. It feels right and familiar to do this, to train his blaster on the door and wait. It’s an empty post that should be filled.

 _They took him from you, just as they took him from me_ , ‘24 thinks, and he’s surprised at the strength of his anger. His emotions are coming back alongside his memories, and he’s starting to know what he wants.

-—-

A gentle hand on his shoulder wakes him up, which means he must’ve fallen asleep.

“Sorry, sir,” he says on instinct, and he looks up to see Kenobi smiling down at him, the corners of his eyes creased into crow’s feet.

“You should really call me Obi-Wan,” he says, and apparently some deeply buried part of ‘24 still remembers how to blush. “But we don’t have time to discuss it, I’m afraid. We have a visitor.” 

‘24’s grip tightens on his blaster. “Just one?”

Kenobi—Obi-Wan—Kenobi closes his eyes and concentrates, eyebrows furrowing.

“Just one,” he confirms. “But she’s angry enough for ten, I think.”

‘24 gets to his feet. One of the suns is already up, and the second doesn’t look far behind. He checks the clasps on his armor and swaps out the gas canister on his Deece, an old and ancient routine. There’s only one person it could be, really.

“We’d better meet her on the sands, sir,” ‘24 says, as if his decision to fight with Kenobi were a foregone conclusion. Maybe it had been.

Kenobi’s bare feet make no sound when they touch the floor, and neither do his boots when they fly through the air to meet his hand. 

“Yes,” he says thoughtfully, regret and sorrow in his voice. “Yes, I think you’re right.”

-—-

Fourth Sister’s black silhouette rises from the dawn-pink of the dunes like a grim reaper appearing out of myth. She is a blood-soaked shadow, and her rage rolls off her like the tremors of an earthquake.

“‘24!” she bellows when she sees him, moving as inexorably forward as a hurricane spinning itself across the sea. “‘24, I have that red lightsaber you always wanted.”

‘24 draws his blaster; he’s not willing to wait until she’s finished her dramatics to start shooting, but Kenobi’s hand stays his shot.

“Not just yet, Cody,” Kenobi murmurs, and it’s the same idiotic tendency towards nonviolence that got all of ‘24’s other targets killed. ‘24 opens his mouth to protest, but Kenobi cuts him off. “I want to know what she knows.”

That’s… well, it’s a better reason than “the Jedi Code said so”.

“Did you think no one would come for you?” she shouts. “Did you think destroying your ship’s nav comp would actually set you free? I _knew_ you hadn’t really crashed your ship. I knew you’d taken the chance to run like a rat into the sewers, hiding amidst the trash.”

The Deece is light in his hands, steady and familiar. ‘24 doesn’t think he’ll have trouble convincing his finger to pull the trigger this time.

Fourth Sister at last gets close enough to be more than an empty black hole in the vague outline of a person, and ‘24 feels Kenobi inhale so sharply his body shakes with it.

“Gail Kara,” he says, and it’s the first time ‘24’s ever seen something stop Fourth Sister in her tracks.

“Master Obi-Wan,” she says, forgetting herself completely, and ‘24 feels a single moment of empathy. Kenobi has that effect on everyone, it seems. 

Then her yellow eyes narrow, and the black sclera around the iris glints in the bright sun. She spins her lightsaber again and pulls it into the opening position of Ataru: one of the few Inquisitors who prefers to fight with a single blade. She has a second saber that she rarely draws, and ‘24 only now thinks to wonder if it’s because that’s what the Temple had trained her in. He wonders how long ago she left—or how long ago she was taken.

“So you’re who he was looking for,” Fourth Sister says. “This whole time. Kriff, fine, _fine_ , I’ll take you both in. I’ll kill you both, and I’ll drop you at Vader’s feet, and he’ll, he’ll—“

“Oh, Gail,” Kenobi interrupts, so soft and quiet, and the wind carries his voice across the sand. He’s always been good at reading people. “Gail, he'll never love you the way you want. He can’t.”

“You don’t know that,” she spits. “Just because _you_ weren’t enough doesn’t mean I can’t be.”

The words linger; they burn, and ‘24 looks over at his Jedi to see his blue eyes clouded with a thousand different sorrows.

“No one can ever be enough for him,” Kenobi says at last. “Not any more.”

She screams then, wordless in her fury, and throws herself in a single impossible leap across the sands at Kenobi. Their lightsabers connect in a flare of white light that fades into red and blue shadows in a ring around them. ‘24 can’t get a good lock on Fourth Sister while she and Kenobi dance around each other, but it doesn’t look like he’ll need to. Kenobi maintains a perfect defensive form, all elegant lines and economy of movement, and Fourth Sister is already getting winded from throwing herself at the impenetrable wall of it.

“Stop, Gail,” Kenobi pleads. He isn’t even out of breath from drawing her into a stalemate, and ‘24 can’t help but wish he’d just run her through. “I can’t fail another student. _Please_ , Gail, put your saber down. We can talk this through.”

“Never,” she hisses, blasting Kenobi across the sands with the Force, and Kenobi flips in midair to land on his feet. She pursues like a bolt of black lightning, and she’s completely forgotten ‘24 at her back. He locks onto her through his scope and sighs with tentative relief when Kenobi sends her saber flying. Fourth Sister falls to her knees, defeated, and her scream of frustration turns into a wail as it erupts from her chest.

“I’m sorry,” she says, sobbing, and Kenobi retracts his saber. “Obi-Wan, I’m so sorry.”

And Kenobi, the fool, the godsforsaken fool, bends down to join her on the sand.

“It’s okay, shh,” he says, reaching for her. ‘24 sees his memory of Ra Zun super-imposed on Fourth Sister’s bent form. “Gail, it’s okay. We can make this okay. We can—“

Caught up in his memory, ‘24 almost isn’t fast enough. He sees Fourth Sister’s hand move to her belt through the scope, and his finger is pulling the trigger before his brain connects the movement to the second saber he knows is tied there. He hears Kenobi’s startled, wet gasp as her saber springs to life, and then he watches the red flare of a blaster bolt connecting to the center of her unarmored head, burning the tightly bound brown curls.

Her saber cuts off with a whimper.

‘24 sprints across the sands, watching Kenobi try to grab his injured side and Fourth Sister’s collapsing body at the same time.

“Are you hurt?” ‘24 barks. He can see the crescent-shaped burn in the fabric of Kenobi’s belt, the fabric of his robes smoking faintly in the clear air, but he can’t see if there’s a matching one on Kenobi’s skin.

Kenobi doesn’t answer; he just sits back on his heels and pulls Fourth Sister’s body into his lap. He’s shaking, and tears are falling hot and fast onto her upturned face. Her yellow eyes, dulled in death, stare up sightlessly at a cloudless sky. Kenobi’s fingers are soft and tender as he reaches out and brushes her eyelids closed.

“She was going to kill you,” ‘24 reminds him, uncertain.

“I know,” Kenobi chokes, tears falling faster, evaporating almost instantly in the hot dry air. “I know, I know. But why, please why is it that _I_ keep surviving? What is my life worth to hers? By all the gods, by the Force, Cody. She was so young.”

Kenobi gathers her to his chest, burying his face in her hair and rocking back and forth. This is a grief greater than one lost student, ‘24 knows, suddenly. This is a grief for a thousand lost Jedi, a lost brother, a lost lover and a lost sister and lost friends. ‘24 looks at the stricken curve of Kenobi’s shoulders, and he thinks Cody would know what to do to ease the tension in that back, to ease the white from those knuckles. ‘24 isn’t Cody, and he doesn’t know.

All he has are his instincts and his honesty.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, and he gets down on his knees to put an arm around his Jedi’s shoulders, tugging him close. “I’m sorry, but I couldn’t—I couldn’t let her kill you. I couldn’t even let myself kill you. Obi-Wan, your life is worth something to _me_.”

And Kenobi—no, Obi-Wan—Obi-Wan turns his head into the crook of ‘24’s bare neck, and he sobs like a child as the second sun rises over Tatooine.

-—-

They light a bonfire for her that night. It’s a true Jedi send-off, and ‘24 has to choke down memories of watching a body he thought was his general’s burn in the exact same way, once.

There are tracks of orange and red shooting through the blue-black sky, trails of color amidst pinpricks of stars. It’ll continue for an hour yet; ‘24 had hooked a timed detonator to every scrap of the explosives and armaments on Fourth Sister’s ship and set the autopilot headed back to the _Executor_. It had exploded a few minutes after exiting Tatooine’s atmosphere, still transmitting the all-clear.

There are pieces of his armor raining down, too, along with the tracker in the lining of his kama that had Fourth Sister’s fingerprints all over it. Obi-Wan watches the false shooting stars and the bonfire with tired eyes, the yellow light reflecting in his irises in a way that makes ‘24 uneasy.

“I’m sorry,” ‘24 says once the fire has melted away into embers, cooling quickly in the frigid desert night. He’s not sorry for shooting her, but he is sorry that he’s not what Obi-Wan needs. “I’m sorry I’m not him.”

And Obi-Wan sighs and attempts a smile. 

“You are,” he says. “I can feel it. You’ve just changed, as we all have.”

“Then I’ve changed into someone who isn’t him, Obi-Wan,” ‘24 rebuts.

Obi-Wan turns back towards the adobe, and ‘24 follows him into the kitchen and mechanically starts to fill the kettle when Obi-Wan collapses into one of the rickety chairs.

“I’m not the person I once was, either,” he admits. “I lost—I lost so many pieces of my heart that day that I’m constantly surprised to have anything left to give. Some mornings, I expect the wind to sweep me away like so much sand. And yet, there is always something more to give. Self, like hope, springs eternal.”

Obi-Wan looks up when ‘24 sets a gently steaming mug of tea in front of him, and he smiles softly at it. With one eyebrow up, he strokes his beard with thoughtful slowness. “Cody, have you ever heard the story of Theseus’ ship?”

“No, sir,” ‘24 says, joining him at the table.

“Oh, please don’t call me ‘sir’,” Obi-Wan says with a wry smile, and then his gaze returns to something very far away. “If you’ll pardon an old man’s sentiment, I think it might be a useful tale to tell, right now.”

“I’ll stop calling you ‘sir’ if you’ll stop calling yourself old,” ‘24 says, just to hear Obi-Wan laugh, and he does. “But go ahead.”

A hint of the usual twinkle reappears in Obi-Wan’s eyes as he starts the story.

“Theseus was an old ship captain,” Obi-Wan says, his voice low and hypnotic. “Not Mandalorian, but close, and he was returning home after what everyone in his clan had sworn was a suicide mission. But the journey was long, and his ship had weathered everything from enemy fire to meteor fields. Over the course of his voyage, his ship underwent constant repairs: they replaced the hyperdrive, the transparisteel windows, even the molding pilot’s seat. By the end, they’d replaced every single piece.”

“Might’ve been cheaper to buy a new ship.”

“Maybe. But it wouldn’t have been the same ship, would it?” Obi-Wan hums. Color is coming back to his cheeks; he’d always loved teaching. “There’s some debate, of course, about how much of a ship can be replaced before it becomes a new ship altogether. But I’ll tell you what I believe: I think it was one ship that brought him to the war and through it, and it was the very same ship that brought him home.”

The stubborn tilt to his mouth is back, and he looks at ‘24 like he’s staking a claim.

“ _Obi-Wan,_ ” ‘24 says, hoarse with the breadth of emotions clamoring in his throat and empty of all words but that one. He does not know the name for what he’s feeling; it seems impossible that such a feeling could even be named at all.

Obi-Wan ducks his head, and a piece of hair falls across his eyes. He isn’t finished. “Cody, I’m not saying we haven’t changed. I’m not even saying that I expect us to go back to the way we were. I’m just saying that—that I think the person I am now can still care, desperately, for the person you’ve become.”

As if in a dream, ‘24 moves his hand from his mug to Obi-Wan’s cheek, brushing that rebellious strand of hair behind Obi-Wan’s ear. ‘24 hesitates, expecting another memory to interrupt him here, to guide him forward. When nothing happens, he just cups Obi-Wan’s jaw, basking in the sudden intake of breath.

“Did he—did we ever…?” he asks, hungry for the knowledge of what he might have forgotten.

Obi-Wan swallows. “No, the war was too important. We never.”

“He wanted to,” ‘24 says in sudden realization. He strokes his thumb across Obi-Wan’s cheek and watches with satisfaction as Obi-Wan’s eyes fall closed, his lashes dusty blonde crescents on pale skin. “I wanted to. Obi-Wan, I _still_ want to.”

“Cody,” Obi-Wan says, turning his face into ‘24’s palm, and he sets his mug down onto the table with a clatter. His breath hitches again. “Cody, please, please, stay with me. Please don’t leave me alone.”

‘24’s already reaching for him as he comes close, folding himself into ‘24’s lap and letting ‘24 wrap his arms around Obi-Wan’s shoulders, careful of the bacta patch on his still-healing side.

“I won’t,” ‘24 promises, pressing a kiss to Obi-Wan’s shoulder, to his cheeks, to his forehead, to the damp curve beneath each eye. “I won’t leave you. I’m staying right here.”

The Empire could bring the entire Inquisitorius to their front door, and it would still be true. The Empire could send Darth Vader and the Emperor both, call for orbital bombardment from the whole fleet of star destroyers, and deploy every useless stormtrooper in the army to their doorstep, and ‘24 would stay right here, burning every last scrap of his humanity just to keep this man safe.

He bundles Obi-Wan up and into his bed and then crawls in after him. ‘24 holds him close as Obi-Wan finally, at long last, opens his heart to mourn all the pieces of himself that he’s lost throughout the years. Obi-Wan has been adrift in a damaged ship for too long, venting its atmosphere. He is Theseus without the credits or time for repairs.

But ‘24 can do this, for Obi-Wan. He can build himself into the shape of someone who will bring Obi-Wan safely home.

-—-

The pale pink light of Tatooine’s first dawn filters through the window, and ‘24 realizes that they both managed to sleep through the night. From where he’s curled across ‘24’s chest, Obi-Wan stirs.

“Cody?” There’s a thread of hope winding through the exhaustion in Obi-Wan’s voice, and Obi-Wan’s eyes blink up at him with concern.

“Yeah, Obi-Wan,” Cody says, and it’s not a lie. He’ll be whoever Obi-Wan needs, for however long he needs it. “I’m right here.”

…

..

.

**Author's Note:**

> ...how we doin'? Doin' ok? Great :) 
> 
> Sorry for being a little late to the Purge Trooper Cody bandwagon! I have a pathological need to put a complex plot into everything, apparently. And I’m glad to have a matching Dark Cody for my Sith Obi-Wan fic ahaha.
> 
> Thank you to @new-anon for the prompt! This might not have made you feel better, per se, but I hope you enjoyed it. 
> 
> P.S.: If anyone would like revenge, feel free to ask about the OCs that I introduced and then immediately killed off… and, afaik, Fourth Sister is never explicitly named, so she’s mine now too ;)
> 
> (“Chel, why are all your original characters angry young women or serene old men?” Great question. Next question.)


End file.
